by Sean Liscom
“No, Blair. I’m all in on this. I just didn’t think barging in would be a prudent approach. Especially since I’m probably staring down the barrel of Nicole Moore’s fifty caliber sniper rifle,” he waved his hand out the open window of the driver’s door as if he were waving at someone.
“That would be a good assumption on your part, Jack. I must say; I’m a little disappointed in you though. I had hoped you would come in here like some wild-west cowboy, guns a blazing. This ending is rather anticlimactic, don’t you think?”
“It’s the only way this can end. You could order Nicole to pull the trigger and hope she doesn’t miss or, you could have the men that are hiding along the side of the road take us into custody. As the old saying goes; the ball’s in your court now.”
“You realize what the odds are of Nicole missing a shot like this are? I believe they are exactly between slim and none,” Blair retorted.
“Then give the order.”
“Come now, Jack. Do you really have such a death wish?”
“Blair, give the order or don’t. I don’t give two shits either way, but you do. You have a code you have to live by, to rule by. According to that code, the only play you have is to take me into custody and have me stand trial for capital murder in front of a tribunal of my peers,” he paused to let that sink in for a moment before he continued.
“Nicole is watching this whole thing play out through her scope. My gut’s telling me that there are probably 15 or so of your men watching it play out from their positions alongside the road. If you give the order and have Nicole pull the trigger, you break the code and there are a lot, a LOT of witnesses, Blair.”
“I have no doubt Nicole would do as you order but in doing so, you would lose all credibility as their leader. Besides, Blair. I’m pretty damn sure you need me to open the door to the ARK before you kill me, right?” there was a long silence.
“You’ve put me in quite the predicament, Jack. On one hand, I’d like nothing more than to see you dead. Right here, right now. On the other hand, you happen to be the only guy on the planet who can open that door for me. Do you see the conundrum I face?”
“I’m growing weary of sitting in this hot Jeep. Make your move, Blair.”
“Have it your way, Jack. Know this though, I only need you and I only NEED you until the seal is cracked on that door. After that, you’re a dead man walking....”
“Actually, you’ve already made your first mistake,” Jack interrupted.
“What?” she asked.
“There are four of us sitting in this car. None of us know the whole code sequence, each of us has a piece. So, in all actuality, you need all four of us.”
“Not possible. You were the one that locked the door. You’re bluffing!”
“Is that a risk you want to take? I sure wouldn’t,” Jack replied. Again, there was a long silence. When men began to emerge from the surrounding brush, Jack set the radio back on the dash. “Don’t get stupid,” he directed the comment to Melissa.
“I know, just shut up, right?” she asked. He didn’t answer, he just opened the door and slowly stepped out of the Jeep, his hands were in the air. Melissa, Ruiz and Wilcox followed his lead.
“Captain Boone, it’s good to see you’re still alive,” Jack said to the man who was rapidly approaching him. There were a dozen men descending on the vehicle from all sides, all of them with weapons drawn. Captain Boone was coming faster than anyone else.
“Shut the hell up!” he barked. “Turn around and get your hands on the vehicle!” Jack did as he was ordered. Boone kicked Jacks feet farther apart and quickly frisked him. After relieving Jack of his sidearm and a combat knife, he spun Jack around and cuffed his hands in front of him. In turn, the same process was followed with Ruiz, Wilcox and finally Melissa.
Captain Boone grabbed Jack by the shoulder with his left hand and delivered a swift, hard punch to Jack’s stomach, causing him to double over and nearly go to his knees. After the Captain stepped back, Jack quickly regained his composure and stood upright again.
“Try that when these cuffs come off,” Jack growled.
“Get moving!” the Captain snarled and pointed up the road. Jack just glared defiantly at the man. “Either you move your ass, or I’ll shoot you where you stand!” he said as he drew his sidearm again. He leveled the barrel so that it was pointed at Jacks face.
“When this is over, me and you are gonna have a go at it!” Jack said and started walking up the road.
Monday, September 4th, 2017
The Ranch.
I read the full sheet of paper that Braden had handed me, twice. This had to be some sort of mistake. Maybe they had decoded the message wrong. There is no way this could have been right. My hands were trembling, and I felt as if I was going to be sick. My guts had gone cold and hard. I handed the sheet of paper to Bill and looked to my brother for answers.
“This can’t be right….” I heard my voice fade out.
“Oh, it’s right! We went through it twice to make sure,” Braden said.
“How could he even think like this?”
“Go back to what you said about the split personality, Jason.”
“What?”
“The 44th journal was coded differently than the rest, but the majority of it was written by Jack Sterling. It was all about the who, what, when, and where for all of the ARK’s operations. Names of operatives and all of that. He laid their plans and people bare so that we could nail ‘em to the wall. That’s what he wanted, that was his original intention.”
“What you just read, that was written by Jack Kenshaw. Sometime before he left here, he got that journal and wrote everything you just read! He’s gone completely off the reservation, man!”
“I can’t believe he’d do something like this. No way!” I argued.
“Bro! The man’s certifiably insane! He’s off his rocker, he’s unhinged and he’s coming unglued! I don’t know how many ways to say it! We have to stop him!”
“He’s right, Jason,” Bill said as he laid the paper on his desk.
“Jesus, Bill! You know the man better than any of us. This can’t be his plan, right? This HAS to be a mistake!”
“No, this is not a mistake. What is a mistake is thinking we can stop him. We’re nearly out of time and we have a lot of preparations to make,” Bill said with an icy tone.
“Those special forces guys, they can stop him!” I blurted out.
“No, they can’t. We are well past that point. This IS going to happen,” he pointed to the sheet of paper.
“But….”
“Jason, you need to pull it together. By my estimate, we’ve got a 48 to 72-hour window. Sitting here is doing nothing but wasting precious time. Jack Kenshaw has every intention of launching those biological weapons. This is the reset he always talked about and it’s going to happen. We have to act now.”
CHAPTER 17
Monday, September 4th, 2017
Devil’s Punchbowl, California.
“Jesus, Blair! You look like shit,” Jack remarked from his seat at the conference table. After being cuffed, the group had been led another mile up the road as the sun receded over the mountains to the west. They were currently in the largest of the four buildings that Melissa could see.
“Screw you, Jack,” she replied in an unladylike tone and sat at the head of the table. A moment later, a scrawny excuse for a man walked into the room. He sat next to Blair, across the table from Jack.
“Bet you ain’t never seen a zombie, have ya?” Jack leaned slightly closer to Melissa when he said it. The man wearing the baggy suit with sunken eyes glared at Jack. “Jerrod, I’d ask how you’re doing but you still look like something the cat crapped out and tried to bury in the sand box,” Jack smirked.
“Actually, Jack, I’m doing quite well. I can’t say the same for you however,” Jarrod smiled a mirthless smile.
“Cut the small-talk,” Blair ordered. “I don’t see any reason to waste our time sitting here
, so why don’t you write down your piece of the code....” her voice trailed off as she slid a note pad over to Jack.
“Really, Blair? You seriously think I’m just going to write it down for you?” Jack asked.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble? All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable outcome. A few more minutes of you breathing will not change the narrative of this story!” she hissed. Jack leaned back in his chair and grinned at her.
“Tell me, Blair. How did you like being locked out of the ARK? What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Screw you!”
“That’s no way for a lady to talk. I’m curious though, what was it like? What was it like listening to Ashton suffocate to death? I know short range communications worked right up till the end, you had to be talking to him, right?”
“Go to hell, Jack. You killed the brightest man on the planet! A man who truly understood the order of things, a man....”
“Apparently he wasn’t that bright,” Jack butted in. “Apparently he was only the second brightest man. He’s dead, I’m not.”
“Captain? Is the tram waiting for us?” she shifted her attention to Captain Boone.
“As you ordered, ma’am,” he replied.
“Excellent! You sure your men can handle these four ruffians long enough to get them to the door?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Get them downstairs and loaded so that we can assume our rightful place in the ARK!” she looked back to Jack. “The other possibility is that the title doesn’t belong to a man but instead, a woman,” she returned his smirk and stood from her chair. Jack and the other three were immediately ushered into the back room at gunpoint.
Captain Boone kicked a large throw rug out of the way to reveal a hatch in the floor with no visible handle. He pulled a small, silver pendant from his pocket, bent down and swiped it across one of the corners. The hatch popped up an inch or so and he pulled it the rest of the way open revealing a ladder into the darkness.
Four of his men went down before Jack, Melissa, Ruiz and Wilcox were told to make the descent. The corridor that waited at the bottom of the ladder was cool and lit with strip lights along the floor. Four more of Captain Boone’s men descended the ladder before Blair and Jarrod brought up the rear. Once everyone had gathered at the base of the ladder, Captain Boone swiped the pendant across a small panel inset into the concrete wall. The hatch above them closed and resealed.
The group was then led down the narrow corridor. Melissa had been counting her paces and it was nearly a mile before they emerged into a larger, well lit room. She could see what appeared to be narrow gage railways in the floor and a dark tunnel at each end of the room. There, in the middle was a small tram sitting on the tracks. It reminded her of one of the trams you would see at an amusement park to transport weary vacationers.
“What is this place?” she asked Jack, quietly. Blair must have heard her and took it upon herself to answer.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but what the hell is it?”
“It's how we got around, back in the day anyway. This runs to the ARK at that end,” she pointed to the tunnel on the right. “Edwards Air Force Base is at that end. That’s where the hub is that can take you to any number of other places, but that’s not important now. Get in,” she gave Melissa a slight shove.
Blair and Jerrod sat in the second row of forward-facing seats while everyone except Captain Boone sat in the back, surrounding Jack and his people. Captain Boone again used his pendant to “start” the tram. As soon as he swiped it across the control panel, the tram responded by moving down the track, into the dark tunnel.
Monday, September 4th, 2017
The Ranch.
“Get the team leaders and command staff together, quietly, and start laying out plans to lock this place down. Bring Dan up to speed and find out from Dale what we’re going to have to do to feed and house everyone. If you’re right, we’re going to be locked behind these walls for quite a while,” I told Bill, the resignation was heavy in my voice.
“Do you want them to know everything?” he asked.
“Yeah, tell them all of it. Leave nothing out. You said we’ve got a small window of time to work with, right?”
“Best guess says we’ve got about 48 hours before he pulls the trigger. Anything after that, well, that’s anyone’s guess.”
“Okay, all I ask is that you give me until 8am to break the news to the rest of the people. I need the team leaders and command staff to have their heads in the game and not a panicked population,” I glanced at my watch, 6:18pm. “I’m late for dinner. I’ll tell Jill and Megan. Braden, you’re with me on that.”
“Alright,” my brother said with a nod.
“Bill, I need a list of material, food, medications, anything you can think of that we’re going to need to keep this place running in total isolation for a while. I’m gonna need that by the time I’m done telling Jill and Megan. Can you do that?” he nodded and opened his center desk drawer. He withdrew a red binder that had “Emergency Contingencies” stenciled on the front of it. He flipped through several sections until he found the one he wanted and turned it so I could read it.
“It’ll need a little tweaking, but here is the basic plan and lists of basic supplies we’d need,” he replied.
“Looks like you’ve already given this a lot of thought....”
“I told you, I do some of my best thinking down here.”
“And here I thought you spent your time hiding down here. Have this tweaked and ready to go in an hour?” I asked.
“Not a problem.”
“Alright, get to it. C’mon bro,” I motioned Braden out the door and headed upstairs.
As the two of us ascended the stairs, we could hear the clanking of dishes and smell the sweet odor of bacon cooking. Lurking in the back of my mind was a memory of Megan asking me if BLT’s were okay for dinner. I must have said yes.
I was the first to round the corner into the dining room and I stopped short. My nieces, Kalin and Allison, were guiding Tara and Luke along in setting the table for dinner. I stood silently, watching them for a moment. The horrifying prospect of what the future might hold for them was fore-front in my mind.
These kids had already lost the world they knew. The cartoons, cell phones and gaming consoles were a thing of the past. They had also lost most of the friends they had enjoyed those things with. Without technology at their fingertips, their world had gotten so much smaller. With the news that I was about to break, their entire world would shrink to the 21 acres inside the ranch walls.
“There you boys are!” Megan announced from the kitchen. When Jill made eye contact with me, she immediately sensed something was amiss and started toward me. How in the hell was I going to do this?
“Jason?” Jill asked as she drew nearer to me. It was just this morning when I told her we had to get on with our lives. We couldn’t wait for the world to be a better place.... I was so damn happy at the news of being a father.... Now, I too was terrified…. I told her the situation with my father would resolve itself. This was an outcome I’d never dreamt of. HOW IN THE HELL COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID? SO NAÏVE? The voice in my head screamed. This.... This was my fault....
Monday, September 4th, 2017
Somewhere under the Angeles National Forest.
The tram came to a gentle stop in a large room at the end of the tunnel. It was comparable to a subway station you would find in any large city. The platform itself had to be over 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. On either side of the tracks, there were light posts like you would see on a street. These were only ten feet or so tall and spaced 20 feet apart for the entire length of the room. Everyone disembarked from the tram car with Captain Boone’s men standing in a semi-circle behind Jack and his people.
“Moment of truth, Jack,” Blair said as she removed a silver pendant from around her neck. She faced the wall, looked intently at it for a moment and then s
wiped it across the corner of one of the flat stones. A 12” x 12” section of popped out and she stepped away from it. Jack stepped forward, grabbed the edge and pulled it out like a filing cabinet drawer to reveal a small computer screen with a 10-digit keypad.
“Once we do this, there’s no going back. Sure you don’t want to shoot me now and save yourself the trouble?” he asked looking up at her. The anticipation in her eyes made them bulge a little.
“Get on with it!” she snapped at him.
“Suit yourself, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he muttered under his breath. He placed his right hand on the keypad and began to type in the code. Melissa looked first at the handcuffs on her wrists and then at Jacks free hands. He’d slipped his cuffs, and nobody noticed! She slowly scanned the faces of everyone present and realized they were all so intent on the computer screen, they didn’t see the obvious right in front of them!
The last person she made eye contact with was Captain Boone. To her utter surprise, he winked at her and returned his attention to Jack. His finger was now hovering over the “Enter” key.
“Before I push this, there are some things you need to be ready for,” Jack said quietly. All eyes were on him. Sure that he had everyone’s full attention, he continued. “As the seal on that door breaks, you’re going to hear a loud hissing. Then, as the gap gets wider, air from this room and this tunnel system will be sucked in. Depending on the air pressure differential, the vacuum created could be quite forceful.”
“The effect could last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Once the pressure has equalized, we can make entry. Emergency lighting should kick on and be sufficient to make our way to the engineering controls. Once there, I can power up the generators which will bring the systems back online. Now, this place has been in a state of complete vacuum for 14 months. There were people here at the time the doors sealed, a lot of people.”
“I don’t expect much in the way of smells, but the sights could be overwhelming. The things that happen to the human body, let me just say that a vacuum can have some terrible effects. Understand what I’m saying?” he finished.